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Fans of Anne make pilgrimage to tiny village of Norval

Norval, ont. – Forty-five minutes west of Toronto is this blink-and-you'll-miss-it village with a single set of stoplights, the rippling Credit River, an upscale bakery, a popular pancake restaurant, a country music venue and a clutch of shops.

By Nancy Wigstonspecial to the star

Thu., Aug. 7, 2008

Norval, ont. – Forty-five minutes west of Toronto is this blink-and-you'll-miss-it village with a single set of stoplights, the rippling Credit River, an upscale bakery, a popular pancake restaurant, a country music venue and a clutch of shops.

But that's not all.

Surprisingly, the village embodies day-tripping perfection, with three nature walks, an award-winning heritage garden, trout and salmon fishing, and the calming ambience of century houses surrounded by tall pines. A few new homes crest the hill, yet Norval seems pretty much as it was when Lucy Maud Montgomery lived here.

The author of the 1908 classic, Anne of Green Gables, lived in Norval's Presbyterian manse with her minister husband and two sons for nine years. She wrote five of her books there.

Like many in Norval, Kathy Gastle, president of the new L.M. Montgomery Museum (in Crawford's Village Bakery), feels a connection with the famous author.

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Her grandmother gave her posters and photographs from the village theatrical and choral societies Montgomery founded, and Gastle was hooked. Visitors today get to see her memorabilia along with items donated by local Montgomery descendants – a relative married a Norval boy in the 1930s.

The visitors book at the museum, open since June, already boasts signatures from Japan, Sweden and England. Farther down the road, the L.M. Montgomery Heritage Garden is resplendent with rainbow-hued hollyhocks. Steps away, fans can retrace the route of her favourite country path.

A major force in our literary landscape, Montgomery has become more intriguing with time, a phenomenon explained by the publication, decades after her death in 1942, of five volumes of intensely honest journals. A diarist since her teens, Montgomery published more than 20 novels, 500 short stories, as well as poetry and autobiography. The Selected Journals of L.M. Montgomery, however, tell the story behind the public face.

In her Norval years she suffered depression, a husband's breakdown, a son's bad behaviour, and the icing on the cake: the fan from hell.

This volume makes as gripping a read as any fiction. Scholars heading to the University of Guelph to study her papers, and lately, says Gastle, "tourists with layovers at Pearson Airport," all make the pilgrimage to Norval. A major conference in Guelph this October will only heighten interest in the village minister's wife.

"I have never loved anyplace so well save Cavendish," Montgomery wrote of Norval.

Still, it's unlikely the anglers fishing the Credit on a sunny Saturday are aware that one of Canada's most famous writers lived and wrote here.

And the fact that Montgomery lived with her family in the manse on Draper St. is not what draws two genial ladies and their cute-as-pie puppy to shady McNab Park. Ditto for the dozen souls sitting rapt at the feet of herb specialist Richard DeSylva as he discourses on a multitude of local herbs. Cautious about the notoriety her success attracted, Montgomery would no doubt have approved.

"I have always loved (Norval) because of the enchanting bits of beauty visible in the distance – lovely hills everywhere and the river and the pines – the beautiful trees around the church."

Whether you come to fish, wade, or picnic by the river, hike historic or ecological paths, hear authors read, visit the Heritage Garden and the new museum, or simply to sample Crawford's sumptuous pies, this village on the Credit rewards you with its timeless, easygoing nature.

Nancy Wigston is Toronto freelance writer and a fan of Montgomery's Journals.

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